


The Lucky Kind

by piggy09



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-11 18:43:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11720247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: [SPOILERS FOR S5E9](Takes place right after the flashback of Helena killing the clone.)The girlbody named Helena remembers again that she is a Barbie doll like the other Barbie dolls and she tries to throw up but she doesn’t have anything left to throw up. Girlbodyyellsat her about how much it needs to be different. She doesn’t know how. She doesn’t know how to fix it, when it’s yelling this loud.





	The Lucky Kind

**Author's Note:**

> [warning: vomit, selfharm]

Girlbody hiding in an alley behind a dumpster. Girlbody dirty as any other girlbody. Girlbody handsshaking. Girlbody knife.

Girlbody’s name is Helena, and she has just thrown up in a back alley. Tomas wants her girlbody back in the van by the time the clock rings, or she’ll be in trouble – the belt, maybe, or maybe he’ll just lock her up and hide her away again. Like a doll inside a house made of cardboard.

The girlbody named Helena remembers again that she is a Barbie doll like the other Barbie dolls and she tries to throw up but she doesn’t have anything left to throw up. Girlbody _yells_ at her about how much it needs to be different. She doesn’t know how. She doesn’t know how to fix it, when it’s yelling this loud.

She can hear sirens. Girlbody hands _shaking_. If the police caught her what would they do with her. Tomas _said_ that nobody will ever love Helena the way that he does, and if the police catch her they will probably be cruel. She has to go back to Tomas, because Tomas loves her. But. Tomas didn’t know that the copies Helena was killing were just like her. Girlbodies. Barbie doll bodies. Helena just like any other body. She’d thought she was a knife but she wasn’t.

When Helena unfolds her hands the knife is still there, shining, like it doesn’t know her girlbody is dirty and broken and not-supposed-to-be touching it. She touches it with her guilty girlbody fingerprints and the gold of it smears. She feels sick. She feels bad. She feels wrong. When she walked into that church she felt so holy she’d thought it must be what flying feels like, and now she feels like every part of the inside of her body is dirty and nothing she does will ever, ever clean it.

She understands for a moment why the nuns dunked her face in bleach. And then she remembers that didn’t make her clean, and she keens a high bad sound in the back of her throat. The bleach didn’t make her clean, and the nuns starving her didn’t make her clean, and she’s so dirty and Tomas won’t love her anymore once he knows. Helena doesn’t know how to get the dirtiness out. If only there was some way to—

She turns the shiny gold knife over and over in her awful dirty hands. She takes the shining blade and wipes it against her shirt until all the badblood is gone. Then she presses the blade against the pad of her thumb.

The blood comes out and it looks like red. The same red? A different red? Is it clean? It hurts, but that’s okay, that feels good. That feels right. When Helena presses her other thumb against her bleeding thumb the pain lights her up like sun through a stained glass window. Helena closes her eyes and she’s kneeling on the floor again, hand held out towards God. Only it’s the pain that’s holy. Maybe the pain is making her holy.

She opens her eyes again. The blood has trickled down her wrist and her mind is calm, and blank, and easy. She looks at the blood on the skin of her body. Her girl body. The copy inside didn’t bleed like this. She wouldn’t take this much care to make her body clean. Helena can work for it, hard, to keep this girlbody clean. Even if she has to bite and scratch and cut the whole thing. If it makes her feel this holy she’d do it forever.

Her whole mind gone slow and easy with it. She can think about this body, now, and the future of it when it is holy. She’ll be a knife again, like she was supposed to be. She’ll be the knife that cuts out every awful girlbody and lets all that bad blood out into the sun. When they’re dead they’ll all be holy, and Helena will be holy too.

When she thinks about it like that it’s all easy again. It’s silly that she’s crouching in this alley. Helena hops over the puddle of her vomit – easy, silly, why did she vomit, what was she scared of – and looks back out at the church. They are bringing the girlbody out on a stretcher, putting bright yellow tape over the church door and frowning at each other. Pig police. For a moment Helena loves them: they are going to make the church holy again, they are going to scrub that blood right _out_. Helena will scrub all the bad blood out too, and she and the church will both be holy.

The clock by the church growls in its throat and then chimes, once, and Helena startles. She puts her thumb in her mouth and sucks it until she’s swallowed all the blood back up, and she wipes the blade off, and she runs runs runs towards where she is supposed to meet Tomas.

She runs and it feels like flying. Girlbody holy. Girlbody holy. Girlbody holy, holy, holy.

**Author's Note:**

> My mind has changed my body's frame, but, God, I like it  
> My heart's aflame, my body's strained, but, God, I like it
> 
> Baby doll, I recognize  
> You're a hideous thing inside  
> If ever there were a lucky kind  
> It's you, you, you, you  
> \--"Wolf Like Me," Lera Lynn
> 
> This is a cover but I do love that version, so. Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


End file.
